LEGENDARY COMPOSER VAN DYKE PARKS RELEASES NEW ALBUM

Legendary artist, composer and producer Van Dyke Parks is pleased to announce his first new album of material in over twenty years, Songs Cycled, set for release July 23rd on Bella Union. Following the success of his classic album reissues last year, Songs Cycled contains Parks’ first new material since 1989, expanding even further Parks’ pioneering, and still unique, handle on Americana with the crystal clarity of a 21st century recording. All this in Parks’ 70th year, which makes Songs Cycled extremely special indeed in so many ways. Alongside new originals such as ‘Dreaming of Paris’, ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Missin’ Missippi’, new collaborations such as ‘Sassafras’ and ‘Money Is King’, there are new cover versions and re-recordings of older tracks, and guest vocals from Gaby Moreno and Irana George.

A musical prodigy and child actor, a session musician, composer, soundtrack writer, arranger, lyricist, and singer, Van Dyke Parks been a significant contributor to several decades’ worth of classics, including a handful of unassailable masterpieces. He’s perhaps still best known for penning the lyrics to The Beach Boys‘ legendary masterpiece ‘Smile’. More recently, his arrangements helped turn Joanna Newsom‘s second album ‘Ys’ into an epic. But the true riches of Van Dyke Parks’ legacy remain his first three solo albums: Song Cycle (1968), Discover America (1972) and Clang Of The Yankee Reaper (1975).

“One of the most distinctive, idiosyncratic contributors to the American songbook.” – AV Club

1. ‘Dreaming of Paris’ (original)
2. ‘Hold Back Time’ (re-recording of a 1995 song from the Orange Crate Art album with Brian Wilson)
3. ‘Sassafras’ (new recording, originally by Billy Edd Wheeler in 1961)
4. ‘Black Gold’ (November 30, ’02 – a fantasy on the sinking of The Prestige, off the coast of the Bay of Biscay)
5. ‘Aquarium’ (cover of 1886 Saint-Saëns piece, an analogue recording with the Esso Trinidad Steel Band in 1971 – VDP produced their album)
6. ‘Money Is King’ (picks up where Wall Street ends, written with Growling Tiger, a.k.a.- Trinidadian Calypso musician Neville Marcano)
7. ‘Wall Street’ (original)
8. ‘The Parting Hand’ (1835 hymn from the tradition of unaccompanied choral music known as the Sacred Harp)
9. ‘The All Golden’ (new recording from VDP’s 1967album Song Cycle)
10. ‘Wedding in Madagascar'(traditional a capella folk-song, arranged and adapted by VDP)
11. ‘Missin’ Missippi’ (original)
12. ‘Amazing Graces’ (instrumental with the ‘Van Dyke Parks Orchestra’)